Photo Tutor: How to capture sunrise shot

On one beautiful morning, i manage to capture this picture. Beautiful sunrise at Ampang, Selangor



 I love to capture this type of photo. With some post process in Photoshop, i was satisfied with the output in the end. Few tips i want to share on how to capture sunrise shot. I'm no expert, but more or less, this is what i always do before i take this kind of shot:

1. If possible, survey the area before you shoot. (where the sun rise/ fall, interesting spot, etc)
2. Tripod is essential. Small tripod like gorillapod will. (please consider you camera weight for optimum result)
3. Get on the ground early or you may miss the moment.
4. Filters like ND, GND and CPL will help you to get the best result.
5. Try to use smaller aperture opening to get the best DOF
6. Consider your foreground and background. Make it as clean as possible to avoid distraction.
7.  Take a few test shot to get the best reading from your camera. (check for any under/ overexposed area so you can re-setting your camera)
8. Try to shoot in RAW to get the best result. (that is what i always do!)

Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II PZD for Sony/ Minolta (Part 2)

I’ve done a test shot indoor and outdoor using this lens at selected focal length at their widest aperture. The picture was sorted starting from 18mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm, 100mm, 200mm and 270mm.

 Indoor  (shot done using a flash, bounced) Generally, I think the sharpness of this lens is quite acceptable for each focal length.

 Outdoor (shot not using flash, handheld) The sharpness is well maintained although there might be some motion blur cause by camera shake since I’m not using tripod

 Bokeh (shot not using flash, handheld) Bokeh generated was quite ok. Please beware the effect of bokeh might vary since the factor of you foreground and background need to be considered. For my case, my background was quite far from the subject, so in theory, the bokeh should be easily obtained.

  My verdict: This lens was quite versatile in term of range and the quality of the picture was not as bad for superzoom lens. Good for travel and for those who want to upgrade their kit lens. The Piezo Drive was surprisingly smooth and silent although the lens do hunting a bit in low light condition. With this Piezo Drive, i’m thinking of testing a Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6 lens

Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II PZD for Sony/ Minolta (Part 1)

 I manage to get a 1 day testing of Tamron 18-270 f3.5-6.3 Di II PZD lens for Sony/ Minolta mount. This lens should be the longest superzoom range ever made for Sony/ Minolta mount to date as it beat Sony SAL 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 by only 20mm. While ‘Di’ is easily identified as digital, this new Tamron also bring ‘PZD’ tag with it. What is PZD? PZD stands for Piezo Drive; a newly developed motor design to give a smooth focusing operation compared to screw-driven motor used in previous version of lenses. I can give credit to this Piezo Drive because it was quite fast and silent too, although in low light condition, the lens struggle a bit to lock the subject (and it was expected). This lens didn’t come along with Vibration Compensation (VC) since Sony/ Minolta has their in-body stabilizer unlike Canon and Nikon. What’s in the box; the lens, petal hood and documents

And it comes with focus lock too. Very handy if you’re on travel

For comparison, it sits almost the same height with my Konica Minolta 17-35mm f2.8-4.0 lens, but at full length, the height was almost double from the original height. This lens has 62mm lens diameter, which is same as SAL 18-250mm f3.5-5.6 The aperture reading for this lens reads as follow:

18mm – min aperture is f3.5

24mm – f4.0

35mm – f4.5

50mm – f5.0

70mm – f5.6

150mm – f6.3

**end of Part 1. Wait for the second part; test shot using this lens.